From Conflict to Convergence: Coming Together to Solve Tough Problems

CHAPTER 3Conflict Can Be Constructive

After the American Revolution, the leaders of the 13 colonies were facing growing disagreement. They couldn't see eye to eye on how the debt for the war would be repaid, who would protect and control the western frontier, or what role the state governments should have compared with the federal government. There was open debate around the possibility of breaking up the new nation, with some people wanting to rejoin England. By and large, we're still living with a number of these tough issues today (though few would say they want to return to being a colony!). But a small group of problem-solvers—James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin—saw an opportunity.¹ This conflict could be constructive. They could gather together and rethink the founding principles of the nation.

They didn't have to work together this way. They could have decided that the former colonies were better off as 13 countries, or a handful of countries formed from colonies that shared ideas about how to organize their government. And when the conflict really started to boil up, it was the summer of 1787—hot, sticky, and muggy, the sort of weather that gets people in a quarrelsome mood. Yet by that September, the 55 delegates from the 13 colonies had settled on the basic outlines of the Constitution of the United States, a visionary document that artfully, if imperfectly, created the structure for our lasting experiment in democracy. ...